In an unpredictable and complex environment, leaders and organisations often find themselves hitting a wall: an apparently insurmountable obstacle.
Hitting a wall
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Choose Leadership Blog
Articles from: Behavioural Change
Given that, now what?
What is your favourite question to support your clients or those you lead to connect to their agency? Over the last six months, more and more participants in our management development programmes arrive standing in a place of concern and anxiety. When I ask “What’s...
CPR Levels of Feedback
What’s a conversation you’ve been avoiding? A conversation at work, at home, with a colleague, with your partner? Most likely, you are avoiding the conversation not just because of what you think will happen but rather because you don’t know how to achieve the outcome...
Resolving conflict
Conflict is ubiquitous in the office. It’s no surprise. I bet you tend to postpone difficult conversations for fear of negative repercussions. Most people do! Yet each time you do that, you throw a new uncommunicated complaint on your pile of frustration. Thus the...
Uncomfortable feelings
Do you recognise this? You’ve had a day full of work really well done, great encounters with other people and good feedback. But there was this one meeting, where you should have been more guarded. And so you have uncomfortable feelings! And thoughts: You said...
Creative leadership and emotional regulation
You hear us say a lot that leadership is about taking responsibility for our world. That's what creative leaders do. But what does that mean?It means taking ownership of how we experience the world. It means recovering to our centred, grounded Self when we're...
Your Expectations Influence Your People’s Performance
Most managers fail to understand how their expectations influence their peoples' performance. What influencing power are you aware of? And when do you feel powerless? You might complain that your subordinates underperform. If so, you’re seeing yourself as a victim of...
Skiing out of your immunity to change
Have you ever gone skiing off-piste? I haven’t. I find sparsely populated ski runs populated by soft, forgiving human beings tricky enough without adding the challenge of hard, immovable, rooted trees into the mix. “Ski the gaps, not the trees.” I was told. What does...
Inner Development Goals Conference
You’re probably familiar with the UN’s seventeen sustainability development goals (SDGs), which aim for a just, prosperous and sustainable future for humanity. And I wonder if you’ve come across the IDGs. If not, here’s my invitation to take a look. What’s the problem...
Where will the change come from?
Our global society is, in Otto Scharmer’s words, “collectively creating results that nobody wants.”As I scan the headlines of news stories this morning, that rings truer than ever. We live in a world driven by conscious and unconscious fear, fed by a constant diet of...
5 Things you need to know about willpower
Willpower. It’s a finite resource. Every day, you only have so much of it. And it affects your leadership. When you wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep, your willpower reservoir is replenished. That’s why you usually don’t crave a cookie or a drink first...
Are you back to square one?
Think of a moment in your life, when you felt discouraged, because it seemed like you’re right back at Square One. It feels unfair, doesn't it? Because you’ve worked hard to: Break a pattern in your behaviour,Be a better listener, orBuild stronger team relationships....
The Most Powerful Gratitude Practice
Last week we shared the health and relationship benefits of receiving a heartfelt gratitude. For this week, we’ve promised that you don’t have to wait around for someone to express their gratitude to you if you want to set yourself up for a healthier, less stressful...
Change Someone’s Life in 3 Minutes
Before the holidays, a priceless gift to a colleague you appreciate is a sincerely felt expression of gratitude. Not just any odd thanks or public recognition, mind you. A heartfelt, authentic, gratitude. But before I come to the specific way of sharing the most...
Why is it so hard to give feedback?
In of one of our recent leadership programmes we asked the participants: “What kind of conversations do you find the most difficult?” The answers were overwhelmingly uniform: What’s hardest for people is to give feedback, particularly when: Someone’s...
Stress: Does It Have You or Do You Have It?
According to Stephen Palmer, you are stressed when you perceive that the pressure you are experiencing exceeds your ability to cope. This is different for different people, but there are commonalities: The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale shows the weighting of life...
When leaders don’t delegate
What is the one big thing, the one behaviour, that if you could change it, would most impact your happiness, your effectiveness, and your relationships to the people around you? For many leaders who are climbing the ranks, it is the ability to delegate...
Change: Friend or Foe?
Are you a change maker or leader? Ever wondered why when you start to bring in a change, resistance inevitably arises? Let’s go back to high school physics 101 and Isaac Newton for the seeds of the reasons why. Newton's third law of motion states that for every...
Leaders know how to transform conflict
If you are a conflict avoider or struggle to be around one, it’s time to take a new perspective on conflict, and to make it less threatening and - yes - more fun! But first let's look at the status quo. Everyone avoids conflict, even those who are known as disruptors...
Radical Acceptance
Leaders take responsibility for their world. And resisting our world is the opposite: We go into Victim mode. A leadership mindset has us explore our resistance with a view of what a relationship or situation calls us to learn. To do that, we must first accept what is.
Detox your relationships
Is it time to detox your relationships? What comes with the globally shared experience of constrained, uncertain lives is the globally shared experience of strained relationships. If you are more edgy and impatient than you would wish, here’s a practice you to (re-)create better relationships at work and at home.
Happy Old New Year
So, how’re your New Year’s resolutions going? It’s the end of the second week of January and mine, such as they were, are doing just fine. You see, I haven’t deployed them yet. Why? Well that’s a good question…
Resilience and the Teflon Pan
Are you resilient? Or are you just very good in protecting yourself in the face of life’s challenges and setbacks? To be a leader others choose to follow, you need to know the difference. Moreover you need to stop investing energy into self-protection. Instead invest it to build more of it. …
You Say Goodbye, and I Say Hello: 7 Questions for 2021
It’s that time of year again, when we dust off our trusty New Year’s resolutions, shine them up a bit for the year ahead, and away we go. If New Year’s resolutions were true measures of our resolve, then only a small percentage of us (4% …yes you read that right, 4%) would be considered to have any resolve at all!
But what if that is because we are doing it all wrong? Read on to discover how to start 2021 on the right foot… (Hint: finish on your left.)
2020 silver lining
In 2020, we were all tested for our resilience and ability to adapt. And there was one insight that people kept sharing with us: The pain of losing physical connection and the joy when experiencing surprisingly deep and meaningful connection online. Ultimately, what’s been driving us in all of our online work this year was the commitment to help our clients to deeply connect, build trust, and lean into each other for support and co-creativity whilst remote. It’s been a joy. Seasons Greetings to you all!
Difficult Conversations
“What makes a conversation difficult? Anticipation of all the bad things that can happen during or after it. What’s the antidote? Practice, Practice, Practice. In this week’s blog we share how you can set yourself up for confidence and emotional mastery in the difficult conversation you are dreading.
Recognition Boosts Productivity – When You Do It Right!
For Elton John, “sorry” may be the hardest word to say. Traditionally for managers, “well done” or a timely “you rock” appear to be higher up the ‘hardest words’ list. This week we unpack why praise and recognition matter (hint: it’s a craving we want to satisfy regularly) and how to do it to create the biggest impact. Read on to raise your feedback game.
Do your team members know what great performance looks like?
When you have an underperformer on your team, it points back to your management. You need to make your expectations clearer. In this week’s blog we share how you can find out for sure whether your team members can answer the first of last week’s 12 questions great managers ask: Do you know what is expected from you at work?
Managers Decide, Leaders Choose
Hot mess reactiveness, decisions and choices, chocolate and vanilla ice cream, managers and leaders. Throw in trying to order some dinner, a bit of football and a friend of mine, and there’s a lesson in leadership in there somewhere.
It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Co-leading helps you run further.
It works in any context.
The key to not getting hijacked by assumptions is to use clean language and share what you are hearing and making up.